


Awakening the Soul

by echoes_of_another_life



Category: Angel: the Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-04
Updated: 2012-12-04
Packaged: 2017-11-20 08:04:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/583113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/echoes_of_another_life/pseuds/echoes_of_another_life
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Doyle: <i>“So how long has it been between sunsets?”</i> Angel: <i> “200 years, give or take.”</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Awakening the Soul

Awakening the Soul

He couldn’t remember the last time he had stood and witnessed its beauty, couldn’t remember if he’d ever bothered to witness it at all, not back then anyway. And why bother, why bother to take the time to stand and watch something that is so common as to seem almost trivial or inconsequential. It will always be there, waiting for a time when youth is past and we’re old and grey and wondering, just where did all the days disappear to, how did they slip away from us in such a fleeting manner as to go unnoticed.

And it’s only too late that we wonder, why did we not take the time to see? To really see, to stand and watch, but back then life was new and we had all the time in the world and why bother with the passing days, why bother as day turned to night turned to day. Why bother at all except to light a candle to replace the waning light, as day turned to dusk turned to night and the sun bowed its head, wrapped itself in its cloak of colours that we never see and retreated, unnoticed, below the horizon. 

It still haunts him, the fact that he never took the time to see its beauty because in his ignorance he thought it would always be there, waiting for his time to pass, his end to near to be noticed by him. Now he does, now he thirsts for it, wishes he’d took the time to see it, just once before it vanished from his view.

Now he wonders what it looks like as he waits for it to pass over from the shadows of his colourless world. Now he hides from it as he watches the afternoon sun bleed through the colourless glass of his office, hits the prism he keeps on his desk to bathe his wall in a kaleidoscope of colour. And he wonders, as he lingers among the shadows, if what he sees is anything resembling the real thing.

There was a time when he didn’t care at all, too busy thirsting for existence as he watched those he fed off bleed for him, become colourless for him as he stripped away their life. A hundred years plus of not caring at all, not giving a second thought for its loss.

And there was a time he was too broken to care or to mourn its loss, to wonder what it looked like as it awoke from its slumber and blazed a path across the sky on its journey westward. A hundred years of tantalum grey, a hundred years of being swamped by feelings he couldn’t name, that brought with them remembered images that were like gifts from hell, gifts that left no warmth of approval, no colours to force away the dark clouds from the existence he previously craved. Just shame and self-loathing that taunted him and kept him a prisoner of the dark, lost, alone and too afraid to step out from the shadows and glimpse for one moment its beauty as it disappeared over the horizon.

Such things weren’t for the likes of him, for him there was no beauty, no hope, none of the colours it would bring as it heralded a new day. For him the sky would always fade to grey, then black as he shivered, and stepped out into the night to watch over the one’s for whom the sun smiled down upon. And he did, watch, he watched them as they too failed to witness its beauty, as he had many years ago and he wondered just what was it they failed to see, failed to notice.

Now he knew. Now he could see the colours as he sat back and watched, pressed his back to the wall that still held its warmth and just watched as it gave its gift of colour amid an interplay of light. 

Doyle was right, it **was** spectacular, and there would be another one exactly like it tomorrow because it was a gift that it chose to give everyday whether it was noticed or not.

But not for him. And not because he had an addiction to the brooding part of life.

No, it was because he didn’t need a ring to bring him the illusion of redemption. 

The whole world **was** designed for them, he knew that now, just as he knew why they had stopped seeing. 

They stopped seeing because in their ignorance they thought it would always be there, waiting for a time when their youth was past and they were old and grey and wondering, just where did all their days disappear to? How did they slip away in such a fleeting manner as to go unnoticed?

But they didn’t disappear, they were there all along, they simply failed to notice, stopped seeing.

And he didn’t want that, he’d spent two hundred years of not seeing, of wondering why he didn’t take the time to see while he still could.

But that time was past, now he saw everything. He saw what they didn’t see because they were too busy wondering why they carried on amid the never ending disappointments, the fear and the pain as they reached for something, a fleeting reward, a purpose. 

Angel watched as the sun lingered, its flaming fingers sketching patterns across the edges of the clouds, watched his first sunset, the only sunset he would ever see as it suffused liquid light over the horizon in a riot of magnificent colour. 

And he glanced at the ring he held in his hand, the promise that he could see this again, and pausing he looked up at the sky as the sun smiled at him secretly from the horizon. He gripped the rock in his hand, lifted his arm and brought it crashing down on the ring, stepping back as it was destroyed amid a flash of light. And he watched as the sun dipped below the horizon, and forever from his view. 

Angel smiled to himself, he didn’t need a ring to know the sun would rise again tomorrow, and he no longer needed anything to remind him of that wondrous moment when it set the skyline ablaze in riot of colour because it would and that alone gave him hope.

Noticed or not it would rise each morning and continue it’s journey, day after day amid infinite patterns, always different yet ever the same. Unconditionally, just as he would himself, and that alone was enough.


End file.
